SALT LAKE CITY — After flying cubesats on the first two Space Launch System missions, NASA will not include them on the rocket’s next flight.
In a presentation at the Small Satellite Conference here Aug. 24, David Hitt of the NASA SLS Payload Integration Office said the agency elected not to incorporate cubesats as secondary payloads on the Artemis 3 launch, scheduled for no earlier than mid-2027.
The key factor in the decision is the change in the configuration for the SLS stemming from NASA’s move earlier this year to convert Artemis 3, originally planned to be a lunar landing mission, into a low Earth orbit test of the Orion spacecraft docking with lunar landers being developed by Blue Origin and SpaceX.
Since Orion will remain in low Earth orbit on Artemis 3, NASA will not use an upper stage on SLS, preserving the final remaining Interim Cryogenic Propulsion Stage, or ICPS, upper stage for the Artemis 4 lunar landing mission. NASA instead will install an inert “spacer” in place of the ICPS on the SLS for Artemis 3.
“Because of that, because the payloads fly above the upper stage, we’re not going to be flying cubesats on Artemis 3,” he said.
On the first two SLS launches, Artemis 1 in 2022 and Artemis 2 this April, the SLS carried cubesats as secondary payloads located on the Orion Stage Adapter. The cubesats were deployed after Orion separated from the ICPS upper stage.
NASA issued a request for information in May seeking input from organizations interested in flying cubesats on Artemis 3 as well as Artemis 4 and 5, both planned for 2028. Hitt said the agency also reached out to countries that have signed the Artemis Accords to gauge their interest in flying cubesats.
He said NASA is still considering flying cubesats on Artemis 4 and later missions. “We are working now with payload developers, cubesat developers, that are interested in flying on those missions.” NASA has been talking to international partners that responded to the agency’s request and is “preparing to begin talking to” those that responded to the RFI.
On Artemis 1, NASA flew 10 6U cubesats that were deployed on trajectories that took them toward the moon and beyond. While all the cubesats successfully deployed, they enjoyed varying levels of success, with some suffering technical problems that prevented them from carrying out their planned missions while others were able to achieve their goals.
Artemis 2 carried four 12U cubesats provided by Argentina, Germany, Saudi Arabia and South Korea. Hitt noted that many focused on space weather and radiation measurements given the high altitude at which they were deployed after the ICPS performed a final disposal burn.
“They spent time in a regime of space that you don’t normally deploy cubesats into,” he noted, offering an opportunity for unique measurements from high above geostationary orbit down to low Earth orbit altitudes.
The organizations that flew the cubesats have released few public details about how those cubesats performed. “All four payloads transmitted data received by stations on the ground,” NASA stated in a paper accompanying the conference presentation, but deferred discussion of the cubesats’ performance to the operators.